


A Marked Man

by velociwrangler (annavalentina)



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annavalentina/pseuds/velociwrangler
Summary: He chuckled, that low and dirty snarling chuckle she'd heard before when he struck someone down onto the ground. "Why are you here, girl?"Zarina Kassir goes looking for an interview.
Relationships: Zarina Kassir/Caleb Quinn | The Deathslinger
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	A Marked Man

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if this is a little rough, I wanted to post it in time for the DLC anniversary :)

It's not so much about the answers, if she's honest with herself.

That's new to her. You should always be open in good investigative work, not pushing back or baulking at an unexpected angle or a piece of information you didn't anticipate, but you should still go in with a plan: not least because of grant applications.

The coarse fibres of the dusty noose in her hand bit into her palm as she walked into the Fog. She closed her eyes, although every remnant of a reckless childhood yelled in her mind that her boot would catch, her leg would turn and she'd land undignified and hard on her face. The image should be odd for the Fog, but sometimes the most undignified petty cruelties were as common here as the most horrific deaths.

She could feel her heart thumping in her throat. 'What do you have to lose?' She asked herself. 'If he says no, then he kills you, you return to the fire or the dark, and it's just a waste of breath. If he says yes...'

Before she could scrounge up an answer to that question, the Fog resolved into a familiar russet sky, the glory of the setting sun blazing over the rushing wind and the croaking echo of vultures. She was down the long, dust-ridden road to the saloon, its ghost piano, and its unattended bar. Beside her a coach rocked on its aged wheels, and she didn't look sideways at the corpses she knew it was full of.

Was the dread that briefly swept up her body, tightening her throat, just a memory or was it a shadow she should pay attention to? Zarina took a step forward, and then another, and then went forward with a steady pace as if some internal ice had been broken, some leash of fear snapped at her neck.

'What if he wasn't even here?' That would be quite the joke. If he wasn't should she try to stay? Which would he take worse, the unexpected visit or the intrusion lying in wait?

Hard to predict in this place. There was no real ability to track patterns and temperament here. They were all trapped in this cycle, and although with survivors you could read or guess inclination, and sometimes snatch moments together at the campfire, with killers the signs were even more obtuse and foggy.

There was no need. As she paused by the steps up to the saloon, she heard an incongruous clink of glass over the macabre plunking of the piano. He was here. He was...drinking?

Zarina inhaled and slipped her recorder out of her pocket. Then she went up the stairs, boots sending long creaks through the worn wood, and stepped into the door frame with her hands raised in the hopefully universal sign of 'I come in peace' and the recorder cradled visibly in her palm. She instantly saw that he was waiting for her, his gaze locked on the doorframe. Zarina waited a heartbeat for a reaction, then lowered her hands and stepped further into the open room. She watched his face while he looked her over, but he gave away almost nothing.

Was his jaw broken, Zarina wondered. It hung strangely loose, and his flat, ghost-white stare invited no questions. He was half-sprawled at the bar in repose, his legs kicked out and his hat tugged low. The dead man was impassive, and he was aware of her figure in the doorway; she knew that much, at least.

No red glow, now. Was that a signal from the Entity, or a trick? Zarina didn’t know how to guess.

Zarina wasn’t afraid to stare danger in the face. If she ever had been, this place and its endless litany of suffering would have burned it out of her. She pulled her notepad out of her back pocket and smiled, thinly, as she stepped forward. "Caleb, isn't it?" she asked. "Caleb Quinn?"

Her voice wasn't as - docile, maybe that's how she'd put it, calm and abstract and even as it would be in the normal course of an interview. If she was honest with herself, and she tried to be, her voice was barbed and baiting. Looking for a response? Looking for an excuse.

She said, "I read about you. You've been dead for a hundred years, in the real world."

It was the first thing she'd ever seen to spark his interest, at least in more than a lazy, malignant sadism. He lifted his chin a little and those pallid corpse-flash eyes turned to her. Was he reassessing her clothing, her hair, the recorder she’d returned to her belt?

When he spoke, his voice was a gravelly rasp, a sound she should have expected from hearing his occasional dark, guttural chuckles in trials. Somehow it still set her back for a second, prickling gooseflesh down her spine. "'Real' world, hunh." He straightened from the bar. He held the neck of a dusty bottle loosely in one hand, and the spurs on his boots ticked softly at the small movement of his legs. He didn't go far, just settled back against the bar; eyes hooded, mouth twisted to one side, hips jutting out in a slouch.

She realized she was just standing there, still, notebook in hand as she watched him with the dreadful fascination of a mouse in front of a serpent. She'd coaxed, bargained and tricked stories from suspects - she still remembered the hours spent staring into Clark's face, the inside of her mouth chalky and her composure locked into a steely lie, pursuing every thread he didn't realize he'd dropped, never letting him see just how much he was saying out loud. She'd gotten pretty good, in her estimation, at guessing where to start applying pressure or where to guide their focus and when to make herself a simple, open receptacle, a listening ear.

Where could she start with Caleb Quinn? There was no leverage here that she knew of. There was no external reward to offer, no moral imperative she was confident would gain traction. His impassivity could have hidden deep guilt or utter indifference or anything in between.

Zarina took a deep breath and continued closing the distance. She came up to an empty chair in front of him, cards scattered across the table's surface, and she drew it out and sat. He observed her, one corner of his hard mouth kicking up, but said nothing.

 _Bait the hook with a little skin,_ she thought. _Give an opening, see if he rises to nose at the scent of blood._

"You know, before I was taken here," she said in a calm, conversational tone, "I was touring the Hellshire Penitentiary."

He reacted to that. The smile dropped away and a rigidity slipped into the angle of his back, his shoulders. Those lean, long fingered hands tensed. He said, "touring?"

"It's been shut down for decades," she said. "An entire wing of the prison was closed off after an incident in 1860."

A breath that was not quite a laugh slipped out of him. But he was really looking at her now, with a piercing intensity that wasn't quite friendly, wasn't quite hostile. "Is that so."

"The 'Mad Mick' Massacre." She studied his face, watched the sneer curl across his features and then pass. "Official story is an outlaw went on a rampage, murdered his way through the prison and the warden."

Always the danger of pushing too hard, saying something too bitter for your interviewee to swallow. Associating yourself with the ugliest of subjects before endearing yourself in the slightest. Zarina hoped she wasn't pushing too hard too fast. Hoped she hadn't lost her touch, lost her instinct entirely in this place.

He chuckled, that low and dirty snarling chuckle she'd heard before when he struck someone down onto the ground. "Why are you here, girl?"

"My name is Zarina Kassir," she said. "I'm a journalist."

"A _journalist._ " He leaned over and spat on the ground with a rough, disgusted laugh. "Never met one of your kind that wasn't bought and paid for."

Her backbone stiffened a little. "Well, now you have," she said, and caught his eyes as he straightened up. He tilted his chin up, considering her, and she held his gaze with a blazing challenge in her own.

"Hn," he grunted. "Where are your kinfolk from, Kassir?"

She blinked. "I - Lebanon."

No flicker of recognition in his eyes, which she supposed wasn't surprising. Even with modern internet there would be plenty of Americans who would struggle to find it on a map. "Middle East?" She offered. _1860._ "Orient."

He raked her a glance from head to toe. "They like you down in Hellshire?"

"It's been a hundred years and some change," she said, and shrugged one shoulder. "America's changed." She couldn't quite stifle the sardonic smile that slipped out, so she let it. "Changed some, at least."

He laughed at that, and the sound still rasped so low in his chest her throat almost ached in sympathy. She wondered if his vocal chords had been injured in some way. Maybe he'd been a smoker, or just had a voice rubbed raw by the years. "Why are you here, girl?"

Zarina gave him a long, slow blink and didn't betray a flicker of irritation or reaction to the continued epithet. "I wanted," she said, "to ask you some questions."

He snorted, took a long drink from the dusty bottle, then wiped the back of his wrist carelessly across his mouth. "Why?"

Her fingers curled into the notebook. She dug her fingernail into the page and rubbed it back and forth, back and forth. "Why not?" she finally replied. "It's my job."

"You not noticed where we're at?" he drawled. "Where you gonna send your little stories?"

The spark of genuine temper wasn't like her. Zarina let it roll through and die out, exasperated. "I'm not going to send them anywhere," she said quietly. "I'll just...have them."

He blinked lazily at her. "Have what?"

"Answers," she said.

" _Answers,_ " he mimicked, not kindly but not mockingly. Maybe...sceptically. "My answers."

She nodded.

"Why?" He knocked the bottle against the leg, still leaning casually back against the bar. "You think I've got the secrets of this place?"

"I..." Zarina pursed her lips. "I think you have the answers to some of my questions. Doesn't have to be all of them. Doesn't have to be the most important questions."

That pallid, unreadable gaze locked on her. Crawled over her face, scoured her. Then he laughed softly. "Try me," he said. "Give me your first."

"All right. Why did you kill the warden of Hellshire Penitentiary?"

He lost all humor in his face, just staring at her. "I felt like it," he said. "Next question."

She should have left the question, circled away and come back gently. She didn't. "Why did you write 'Death to Bayshore' in your cell?"

There was no answer for a long, long moment. He just stared at her, fixed and cold, and she wondered if this was when he lost patience. She kept breathing, thin but steady, and didn't drop her gaze.

Finally he snorted. "Because he needed killing," he said, and then smiled thinly again. "Last question."

They clamored at her lips briefly, a thousand different questions, and so many of them were about this place suddenly. _Is it like it is for us, getting picked up? Have you ever died here? Why do you hunt us? Did it tell you to, have you heard its voice?_

Instead she closed with a softball question, letting the interview die on a friendly note. "Did you make your gun?"

It was a good choice apparently. His lips curved in a slow, harsh, self-satisfied smile. "Yeah," he said. "She's all mine. Now your time’s up, girl. Run along."

Zarina rose to her feet, pushing her pen back into the rings of the notebook. "Nice talking with you," she said, and offered her hand.

He tilted his head, studying it with thinly veiled amusement. But then, surprising her, he straightened enough to grasp her palm. His hand was rough, callused, firm.

"Can't promise I'll be as easily amused next time you visit," he said behind her as she walked out. Zarina lifted a hand in a carefully casual, non-committal wave. Her heart was pounding in her throat like a trial had suddenly begun between just the two of them, slamming in her temples. She stepped down off the porch and felt - energized by that old rush, that _aliveness_ , tingling with focus.

Until this moment, she'd barely realized how numb she'd begun to feel.

No matter the warning, no matter how unamused he might turn out to be, she already knew she'd be back.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to finally post some part of this for the anniversary. Been working on the whole story on and off almost since they came out, and updates may come slow due to other projects, but I hope you enjoy. The rating will eventually rise; it's mostly meant to be dabbling in possibilities and little pieces of exploring their dynamic.


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